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Wednesday, March 28, 2012

No second chances

All I Need Is Another Term; to finish you off ; America

As he
campaigns for re-election, Barack Obama pursues a profound and uncommon honor
denied to nearly two-thirds of his predecessors. Contrary to a widely held popular
belief, political history doesn’t anoint incumbent presidents as automatic
winners or even presumptive favorites. The numbers show that most presidents
fail in their efforts to maintain a long-term hold on the affections of the
fickle public and that Obama will face an uphill struggle in attempting to
reprise his epic victory of 2008.

Of the 42 men who served as
president before the current incumbent, only 15 won two consecutive elections.

Theodore Roosevelt

Among the others, 5 died during
their first terms, 7 incumbents declined to run, 5 tried but failed to win
their party’s nomination, and 10 won the nomination but lost their bids for
re-election. What’s more, three former presidents (Martin Van Buren, Millard
Fillmore and Theodore Roosevelt) attempted to make comebacks and roared out of
retirement as third party candidates; all three of them failed miserably in
November, winning between 10 and 27 percent of the popular vote.

The numbers look even worse for
second terms if you remove the early “cocked hat” presidents (George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe) who easily won
re-election before the emergence of the modern two-party system. Washington and
Monroe, for instance, both eased into second terms without campaigning and
without facing even token opposition. With these early chief executives
withdrawn from the equation, 70 percent of those who have served as president
since 1825 (26 of 37) failed to win two consecutive terms.

Some of these one-termers
counted as obvious failures, rejected by big majorities of their contemporaries
and winning scant respect from historians. Even at the time, no one expected
John Tyler, James Buchanan or Andrew Johnson to renew their leases on the White
House. But other presidents who lost bids for a second term played big roles in
history and have earned many admirers throughout the generations.

If Barack
Obama fails in his bid for re-election, he will join such estimable
predecessors as John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Grover Cleveland (who came back
from his second-term loss to win a non-consecutive victory), William Howard
Taft (who returned to Washington as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) and
George H W Bush.

Harry Truman

Moreover, two powerful
presidents generally labeled “great” or “near great” by historians found
themselves nonetheless thwarted in their ambitions to win re-election. Both
Harry Truman and Lyndon B. Johnson served as Vice Presidents who succeeded to
the presidency upon the death of wildly popular incumbents (Franklin Roosevelt
and John F. Kennedy), then won a full term in their own right. Widely expected
to seek re-election, both men fared poorly in early primaries (Truman actually
lost in New Hampshire to the little known Tennessee Senator Estes Keefauver)
before withdrawing as candidates—and insisting that they’d intended to withdraw
all along.

Of the fifteen presidents who
prevailed in winning two consecutive terms (or four, in the case of FDR) nearly
all of them count as historical giants and successful, significant chief
executives. The only two arguable exceptions would be Ulysses S. Grant
(1869-77) and George W. Bush (2001-09), and prominent academics have recently
led a major resurgence in Grant’s historical reputation while Bush admirers
await a similar re-evaluation for that undeservedly reviled war leader.

In considering the chances for
Obama’s re-election, it’s obvious that he doesn’t count as either a sure loser
with a thin or non-existent list of accomplishments, nor does he qualify as an
obvious winner with a Rushmore-ready profile and a resume of immortal
achievements. In other words, President Obama won’t experience the resounding
rejection that doomed the re-election hopes of Franklin Pierce, Herbert Hoover
and Jimmy Carter, nor will he register the inspiring vote of confidence that
gave Jackson, Lincoln, FDR, Ike and Reagan back-to-back victories.

Despite the attempt at
apotheosis by the glowing new, Tom Hanks-narrated documentary “The Road We Have
Traveled,” Barack Obama can’t run as that sort of triumphant titan; nor need he
hide as the feckless, dreary disgrace of conservative propaganda. He clearly
occupies some middle ground among first termers, suggesting a fierce, closely
contested battle against his all-but-certain opponent, Mitt Romney.

Good Luck GOP

The long, sour, discouraging GOP
primary battle has produced soaring Democratic hopes that the public will
overcome all doubts and embrace Obama due to fear and loathing of the
Republican alternative. But the inevitable course of the re-election struggle
will make the race a referendum on whether the public wants another four years
like those they’ve just experienced. Clearly, this particular race could go
either way, but history shows that whenever once-elected presidents seek a
second chance, more often than not the people say no.